ELY CATHEDRAL
CAMBRIDGESHIRE ENGLAND
PAUL SCOTT
This plan comes from the Cathedral booklet ‘Ely Cathedral – A Short Tour’. The northerly direction indicator at top is not quite accurate, but near enough. The Cathedral is basically cruciform in shape, but with a couple of additions. At the West end (bottom) an entry porch has been added, and to the right of that is the Southwest transept. (The symmetrically placed Northwest transept had to be taken down in the 15th century.) Then in the Northeast corner a large Lady Chapel has been built, with connecting links to the North transept and the North choir aisle. In our investigation, we shall explore in turn the exterior, the entry and Southwest transept, the nave, the North transept and Lady Chapel, the crossing, the South transept, and finally the choir and presbytery. A further two additions are the Stained Glass Museum, and a tour of the Octagon lantern.
A brief history is given below. If you want to begin the tour of the Cathedral immediately tap / click on START .
You can access intermediate points in the tour by a tap / click on the following links:
To continue with the tour, start with START !
NOTE ON MAGNIFYING IMAGES
With this website format the images are large enough for most purposes. If there is a need for greater magnification of an image, go to the identical photo on
https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulscottinfo/albums
and use Command - + (Mac) or Windows - + (Windows).
HISTORY
[Wikipedia]
Ely Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. The Cathedral has its origins in AD 672 when St Etheldreda built an abbey church. The present building dates back to 1083, and cathedral status was granted it in 1109. Until the Reformation it was the Church of St Etheldreda and St Peter, at which point it was refounded as the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely, continuing as the principal church of the Diocese of Ely, in Cambridgeshire. It is the seat of the Bishop of Ely and a suffragan bishop, the Bishop of Huntingdon. Architecturally it is outstanding both for its scale and stylistic details. Having been built in a monumental Romanesque style, the galilee porch, Lady Chapel and choir were rebuilt in an exuberant Decorated Gothic. Its most notable feature is the central octagonal tower, with lantern above, which provides a unique internal space and, along with the West Tower, dominates the surrounding landscape. Ely Cathedral is a major tourist destination, receiving around 250,000 visitors per year, and sustains a daily pattern of morning and evening services.
An extensive history of the Cathedral can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ely_Cathedral
